


Astral Pineapple Casserole

by zjofierose



Series: Zjo's zine fics [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Casseroles, Childhood Memories, Cooking, Dessert & Sweets, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Nostalgia, Sweet, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vegan Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29124327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: “Do you want cornflakes or crackers on yours?” Keith asks, like it’s a normal question, and Shiro, who did not grow up with either of these as a regular topping on anything, has to stop and think.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Zjo's zine fics [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1503608
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46
Collections: Sheith Cookbook





	Astral Pineapple Casserole

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the All Good Things: A Sheith Cookbook zine! Such a wonderful project, and such a pleasure to be a part of it!

“Wait, so,” Shiro looks dubiously at the four large, unopened cans of pineapple chunks sitting on the counter of their small Garrison apartment. “This has pineapple…and cheese?”

“Yeah. And I’m making one with your fake cheese, too, so you can try it.” Keith passes over the can opener, the trusty old metal one he’d rescued from one of the drawers at the farmhouse. Shiro could open these cans with a gesture from his prosthetic, but instead he sets the bite of the metal to the can lid and begins to crank.

“It sounds disgusting,” Shiro says honestly, and Keith just laughs, pulling out both of their glass baking pans from the cupboard next to the stove and setting them on the counter-top.

“You like pineapple on pizza,” he points out reasonably, “that has a lot of the same ingredients as this.”

Shiro thinks it over as he drains the cans one at a time into the sink. “I guess,” he admits, “but that feels different. Pizza is an inherently savory food, at least in the west, and this is a dessert, right?”

“Yeah, it is. You can make it with more or less sugar, but it’s meant to be a dessert.” Keith measures out a significant quantity of flour into a large glass mixing bowl, then follows it with a not-at-all small amount of sugar before beginning to stir the dry ingredients together with a wooden spoon. “Can you get the shredded cheese and your fake stuff out of the fridge, please?”

“Sure,” Shiro rummages in the deli drawer, taking note of a green pepper that’s nearing the end of its lifespan and needs to be included in dinner. He sets it aside and emerges with the requested ingredients. “What made you decide to make this for the potluck?” he asks, dropping the packets onto the counter.

Keith hums. “Remember a couple months back when Hunk ended up with all that pineapple in the mess hall for some reason, and was trying out a bunch of new recipes?”

Shiro nods. That had been an interesting couple of weeks, culinarily speaking. He’s generally pretty open-minded about what he’ll put in his mouth, but there had been a few items present that had pushed his boundaries. Rather, Shiro thinks, like today.

“I mentioned it to him then,” Keith continues, “and he was interested. He didn’t get around to testing it before he finally ran out of pineapple, so I said I’d make it for him sometime. What better time than his birthday?”

It’s a fair point, Shiro thinks, watching with fascination as his husband distributes the pineapple across the bottom of the baking dishes before shaking the sugar and flour mixture evenly across the fruit layer. He can’t even anticipate what this is going to taste like; his mind is too busy trying to reconcile “tropical fruit” with “melted cheese and sugar.”

Keith is as efficient in the kitchen as he is everywhere else, and by the time Shiro has the cans rinsed and in the recycling, Keith has added the shredded cheese (and the shredded “cheese”) to their respective pans and is busily crushing a roll of crackers in their crinkly wax paper tube.

“Do you want cornflakes or crackers on yours?” he asks, like it’s a normal question, and Shiro, who did not grow up with either of these as a regular topping on anything, has to stop and think.

“Cornflakes,” he decides, and Keith nods in agreement, carefully opening the cracker tube and shaking out the crushed bits across the dish with the real cheese.

“Good choice,” Keith tells him, opening the cereal box, “I think you’ll like that better.”

Shiro knows when to conduct a strategic retreat, so he pulls out one of their retro vinyl-and-metal kitchen chairs and sits down. Keith checks the oven temperature, then pours the melted butter he’s been keeping in the microwave liberally over both casseroles.

“Where did you learn how to make this?” Shiro asks him as Keith fetches the small fresh pineapple that’s been ripening by the window for the last three days and slices it into perfectly even rings with his knife. He hums absently as he arranges them in artistic fashion on top of the casseroles.

“The Marquardsons,” Keith answers, rinsing his knife and his fingers in the sink before drying them on the hem of his t-shirt.

“The family you were with before you came to the Garrison?”

“Yeah,” Keith sounds thoughtful as he reaches into the fridge for a small jar of maraschino cherries. Every time Shiro thinks the collection of abominations on the counter can’t get any weirder, Keith is proving him wrong, and he watches in faint horror as Keith settles a single artificially-red morsel inside each perfect pineapple ring. “There!” he declares with pride, beaming as he turns to Shiro. “All set! What do you think?”

“It’s…cheerful?” Shiro says, trying to hide his utter disbelief that what Keith has made could be considered ‘food’. “They look very nice.”

Keith just snorts, turning to open the oven door and slide them in. “You’ll see,” he promises, “it’s delicious.”

Shiro shrugs. He’s not convinced, but he’s not fooling anyone. He’ll try anything Keith asks him to once. “The Marquardsons?” he prompts, and Keith sets the oven timer and pulls out the chair across the small formica table-top.

“Yeah,” Keith says, reaching out and catching one of Shiro’s hands in his own, playing idly with Shiro’s fingers. “They were good. I wasn’t in a place where I was an easy child to foster, and they could have just let me self-destruct, but they tried.”

“I’m glad,” Shiro says softly, and Keith gives him a small smile. He doesn’t talk too much about his various foster families, and Shiro doesn’t push, but he appreciates these little insights into who Keith was before Shiro knew him, how Keith became the man he is now.

“They wanted to let me stay with them after…” Keith pauses, looking away. “After you were gone, and I got kicked out. But,” he takes a breath, and Shiro rubs a thumb soothingly across Keith’s knuckles, “but because I was over eighteen, and I had a record of delinquency, it could have jeopardized the other kids in their care to have me in the house.” He looks at Shiro, echoes of that same determined stare Shiro’d seen fifteen years ago still present in the lift of his chin. “I didn’t want that.”

“You’re so good, Keith,” Shiro says, and he can hear the lovesick earnestness in his own voice even as Keith rolls his eyes. “I love you so much.”

“I knew what it was like,” Keith shrugs. “To get bounced from a house. I didn’t want to be the reason that happened to someone else. Anyway,” he raises an eyebrow at Shiro, “Mr Marquardson was the cook in the family; Mrs Marquardson was an orthodontist, and he did her bookkeeping part-time and took care of the household stuff the rest of the time.” Keith grins. “She’s the reason I got braces for free.”

Shiro snorts. “Did that make them hurt any less?”

“No,” Keith laughs, “I still hated them. But she let me get red and black rubber bands, and I didn’t have to have them for too long, so oh well.” He leans back against the wall, tangling his fingers into Shiro’s until their rings clink gently together. “She made okay money, but they always had several fosters, so they got a lot of food from the food bank, and that was always dependent on what was in stock, right?”

Shiro nods. His grandparents always cooked from scratch and kept a garden, but he understands the theories behind food stamps and food pantries and supplemental feeding programs.

“So for Thanksgiving one year, some grocery store must have seriously overstocked canned pineapple, because right afterward, suddenly the food bank was just  _ flooded _ with about-to-expire cans of it.” Keith chuckles. “I think they gave us two entire flats, which, I don’t care if you’ve got seven people in your house, that is a  _ lot _ of pineapple!”

“Wow,” Shiro breathes, picturing it, rows of silver cans with yellow labels marching past his mind’s eye. “That’d be enough to turn me off it for life.”

Keith just shrugs. “The Marquardsons, they were a casserole people.” Shiro shudders, and Keith reaches over to flick at his shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with a good casserole.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” Shiro declares, and Keith kicks him under the table. “Ow!”

“So, Mr Marquardson,” Keith continues, raising an eyebrow at Shiro as he pouts exaggeratedly and rubs at his ankle, “he went digging through the family cookbooks and found this. We must’ve eaten it twice a week for the rest of the year,” Keith chuckles, and the look on his face is both distant and fond.

The timer on the oven buzzes, and Keith pops up to check it. The scent of hot fruit and sugar is starting to waft through the room, and dubious as Shiro is regarding the final product, he has to admit it smells tasty. He watches as Keith deftly turns off the oven and pulls out the baking dishes, leaving the oven door open to vent the bulk of the heat.

The smell that fills the kitchen is one part fried confection and two parts tropical juice mix that’s been sitting in the sun on a hot day. Shiro doesn’t know quite how to parse it, so he just watches as Keith wraps each dish carefully in foil before putting them back in the oven to keep warm until they leave. There’s a quiet anticipation in his movements, and Shiro knows Keith is looking forward to this, not just to being able to give Hunk a gift he’ll appreciate and enjoy, but also to sharing this piece of his past. It’s so rare for Keith, even now with his solid connection to Krolia, to feel really at peace with his background and all the myriad complications it inflicted on him, and Shiro knows these little moments of remembered joy really count.

He stands, looping his arms around Keith’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

Keith chuckles. “What was that for?” he asks, swatting Shiro playfully with a dishtowel.

Shiro just hangs on, humming in his ear. “No reason,” he smiles. “I just like you.”

“I like you, too,” Keith laughs, turning in his arms to kiss him fully. He tastes like the pineapple he’d sneaked as he added the decorative slices. “I like you best of all.”

\--

Hunk’s party is, predictably, a delight. Food and people spill from every doorway of his and Romelle’s and Shay’s house, the sounds of revelry echoing into the street. The birthday boy himself is reigning in the kitchen, and peels back the protective foil of the dishes Keith presents with exclamations of excitement and pleasure. Someone hands him a fork, and he takes a bite, eyes closing as he considers the flavors.

“Wow, Keith!” Hunk exclaims, taking another bite before handing the baking dishes off to be added to the piles of food on the groaning banquet table. “I love it! I’ve never tasted anything like it!” He wraps Keith, and then Shiro, in massive bear hugs, lifting Keith off the floor with the force of his joy. Keith kicks weakly in protest, but Shiro can see the grin on his face.

They make their way out of the kitchen, leaving Hunk to the continual arrival and well-wishes of his guests, getting out of the press of people as quickly as they can. The banquet table is spread with every variety of food Shiro has ever seen and several he hasn’t. Coran is passing out plates at the end, cheerfully greeting everyone as they arrive at the back of the line, mustache bobbing away as he points out silverware, napkins, and drinks. They take their slaps on the back along with their plates, loading them high with a promise to return for seconds when they’re done, before heading for the backyard and deck.

Outside the air is cooler, and the setting sun is painting the western sky with a wash of reds and purples, picking out the edges of the mountains in purple relief. Shiro eyes the gooey yellow blob on his plate with trepidation, but Keith is watching him closely, and this is no time for cowardice. He takes his fork and stabs a bite, cornflake, cheese, and pineapple together, and brings it to his mouth.

He chews. The flavor is interesting, a burst of tangy sweetness followed by the slightly sharp flavor of cheese. The texture is…different, he thinks, chewing and swallowing carefully.

“What do you think?” Keith asks, and Shiro smiles.

“I love it,” he says, and Keith rolls his eyes.

“Don’t lie, Shiro.”

“All right,” Shiro relents, “it’s not bad. But it’s still pretty weird.”

Keith snorts. “That’s fair. Thank you for being brave and trying it.”

Shiro puts another bite in his mouth. It’s better the second time, now that he knows what to expect. “Anything for you,” he says, completely honest, and Keith smiles, leaning into his shoulder.

“Pretty sure that’s my line,” Keith tells him, and Shiro loads up his fork, holding it up until Keith opens his mouth to take it. His eyes close in bliss as he tastes it, and Shiro can’t look away.

“Turned out well?” Shiro asks. “Like you remember?”

“Yeah,” Keith nods, and steals the fork to grab another taste. “Next time I should do green bean casserole,” he adds thoughtfully, and Shiro can’t repress the tiny shudder that ripples through him.

“Don’t give me that,” Keith teases, “you know you’d try it.”

Shiro kisses his cheek. “I would,” he agrees. “For you, I would.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Try it, it's delicious!](https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/pineapple-casserole-recipe)
> 
> comments are love!


End file.
